The Captive (31 page)

“That would make people think of angels,” I reminded her.

“Hardly apt in your case.”

She was laughing again. There was quite a lot of laughter that morning.

I said to her: “We’ll start lessons tomorrow morning at nine-thirty and we shall finish at twelve noon.”

“Miss Evans started at ten.”

“We shall start at nine-thirty.”

Again that grimace, but it was still good-tempered.

I really thought we were getting on much better than I had thought we should. She seemed interested in me. I wondered whether I should be able to get her to work at her lessons.

I was soon to have a rude awakening.

It was understandable that on my first night at Perrivale Court I should find that sleep evaded me. The events of the day kept crowding into my head. Here I was at last, in Simon’s home, almost at the scene of the crime, one might say; and I was dedicated to the monumental task of proving his innocence. I felt greatly comforted by the thought of Lucas to whom I could turn at any time. I was touched that he had offered to marry me. I had been truly amazed. I had never thought of him in such connection, or only vaguely when Aunt Maud had had that speculative look in her eyes when she knew I had met him at Felicity’s home.

I was turning over in my mind how I should begin my research. This was what would be called a wild goose chase and it was only because of the fantastic adventures through which I had passed that I could

contemplate embarking In the meantime I had to cope with Kate. Quite a task in itself. The beginning had been easier than I had thought it would be, but that was merely because I had managed to make her mildly interested in me. I could visualize her quickly becoming bored and then the campaign against me would begin. I hoped she would not make my life intolerable before I had made some progress in my search.

I must learn something about Cosmo, who had been engaged to marry the fascinating Mirabel who had become a definite personality to me. I was getting my cast together. Simon, I knew well; I had glimpsed Tristan.

How enamoured had Simon been of Mirabel? Having seen her I could imagine how attractive she would be to most men.

I must have dozed, for I was awakened suddenly by a sound outside my door. I opened my eyes and saw the door handle slowly turning. The door was silently pushed open and a figure glided into the room. It was covered with a sheet and I knew at once who was under that sheet.

She stood by the door and said in a sibilant whisper: “Go away. Go away … while there is still time. No good can come to you here.”

I pretended to sleep on. She came closer to the bed. My eyes were half closed and when she came near enough, I caught the sheet and pulled it off.

“Hello, ghost,” I said.

She looked deflated.

“It was a poor impersonation,” I added.

“And a sheet… obviously a sheet. Couldn’t you have done better than that?”

“You were pretending to be asleep. It wasn’t fair.”

“You were pretending to be a ghost and all’s fair in love and war, and war is what this is, isn’t it… since it certainly isn’t love.”

“You were scared.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Just for a minute?” she said almost pleadingly.

“Not for a second. You could have done better than that.

In the first place, if you planned to stage a haunting, it wasn’t very clever to talk so much about ghosts when we first met. You see, you put me on my guard. I said, “This girl fancies herself as a governess-baiter.”

“A what!” she cried.

“You see, you have such a limited vocabulary. I’m not surprised, as you won’t learn. You like taunting governesses because in comparison with them you feel ignorant. You think that for a moment they are in a weak position and you are in a strong one. That’s rather cowardly, of course, but people who are unsure of themselves do things like that.”

“I frightened Miss Evans.”

“I’ve no doubt you did. You don’t care about other people at all, do you?”

She looked surprised.

“Didn’t it occur to you that Miss Evans was trying to earn her living and the only reason she would want to teach an unpleasant child like you was because she had to.”

“Am I unpleasant?”

“Very. But if you gave a little thought to others besides yourself, you might be less so.”

“I don’t like you.”

“I don’t greatly care for you.”

“So you will go away, will you?”

“Probably. You don’t think anyone would want to stay to teach you, do you?”

“Why not?”

“Because you have stated so clearly that you do not want to learn.”

“What of that?”

“It shows you have no respect for learning and only stupid people feel like that.”

“So I am stupid?”

“It would seem so. Of course, you could change. I tell you what. Why don’t we make a truce?”

“What’s a truce?”

“It’s a sort of agreement. You make terms.”

“What terms?”

“We could see if you like the way I teach and if you are prepared to learn. If you don’t, I’ll go and you can have another governess. It will save you racking your brains for methods to make me uncomfortable. Let’s go about it in a civilized way without all these childish tricks to make me go.”

“All right,” she said.

“Let’s have a truce.”

“Then go back to bed now. Good night.”

She paused at the door.

“There are ghosts in the house, though,” she said.

“There was a murder here … not long ago.”

“Not in this house,” I said.

“No, but it was Stepper’s brother. One was killed and the other ran away. They were all in love with my mother before she married Stepper.”

She was very observant. She had noticed the change in me. She came back and sat on the bed.

“What do you know about it?” I asked.

“You weren’t in the house at the time.”

“No, I came here when my mother married Stepper. Before that we were at Gramps’s house.”

“Whose?”

“My grandfather’s. He’s in the Dower House now. He went there when my mother got married. He had to have a better house then because he was the father of the lady of the manor. Gramps didn’t like living in a little cottage anyway. He’s really a very grand gentleman. He’s Major Durrell and majors are very important. They win battles. We used to live in London but that was years and years ago. Then we came here and everything changed.”

“You must have known them all … the one who was killed and the one who went away.”

“I knew them … in a way. They were all in love with

my mother. Gramps used to laugh about it. He was ever so pleased, because when she married Stepper we moved out of the cottage. But first there was all that fuss. And then Cosmo was killed and Simon ran away because he didn’t want to be hanged. “

I was silent and she went on: “They do hang them, you know. They put a rope round their necks and they … swing. It hurts a lot … but then they’re dead. That was what he was afraid of. Well, who wouldn’t be?”

I could not speak. I kept seeing Simon stealthily leaving the house . making his way to Tilbury . meeting the sailor, John Player.

She was watching me closely.

“Ghosts come back when people are murdered. They haunt people.

Sometimes they want to know what really happened. “

“Do you think something happened … which people don’t know about?”

She looked at me slyly. I was unsure of her. She could be teasing me.

I had betrayed my interest and she had noticed. She would already have guessed that I was extraordinarily interested in the murder.

“I was there, wasn’t I?” she said.

“I remember. I was with Gramps .. my mother was upstairs. Someone one of the grooms from Perrivale came to the door and said:

“Mr. Cosmo’s been found shot. He’s dead.” Gramps said:

“Oh my God.” You’re not supposed to say Oh my God. It’s taking the Lord’s name in vain. It says something in the Bible about it. And Gramps went upstairs to my mother and he wouldn’t let me go up with him. “

I tried to think of something appropriate to say but nothing came.

“Do you ride. Cranny?” she asked, seemingly irrelevantly.

I nodded.

“I tell you what. I’ll take you to Bindon Boys … the scene of the crime. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I said: “You’re obsessed by the crime. It’s all over now. Perhaps one day we’ll ride out to that place.”

“All right,” she said.

“It’s a pact.”

“And now,” I said, ‘good night. “

She gave me a grin and, picking up the sheet, left me.

I lay for a long time, wide awake. I had come to teach Kate, but there might be a good deal she could teach me.

Kate had long decided that the lives of governesses should be made so uncomfortable that they found it impossible to stay, so they left, which gave her a period of freedom before the next one came, and she had to start her eliminating tactics once more.

I was different from the others, mainly because she sensed that it was not imperative for me to keep the job as a means of livelihood. That took a little of the spice out of the baiting and gave me the advantage. I tried to tell myself that all children had a streak of cruelty in them because they lack experience of life and therefore an ability to imagine the extent of the suffering they cause.

Apart from the fact that I was becoming sure that she could be of use to me in my quest, I wanted to take up the case of other governesses who had suffered before me and in particular those who would suffer after me. I wanted to teach Kate a little humanity. Oddly enough, I did not despair of her. I believed something must have happened to make her the callous little creature she had become; and I had a feeling that it must be possible to change her.

The next morning, rather to my surprise, she was in the schoolroom at the appointed time.

I told her I had worked out a timetable. We would start with English, perhaps for an hour or so; we would see how that worked. I should want to test her reading ability, her spelling, her grammar. We should read books together.

I had found a collection in the cupboard. I picked up The

Count of Monte Cristo and when I opened it I saw “Simon Perrivale’ written on the flyleaf in a childish hand. I felt my own hands tremble a little.

I managed to hide my emotion from her alert eyes. I said:

“Have you ever read this book?”

She shook her head.

“We’ll read it one day and, oh, here’s another. Treasure Island.

That’s about pirates. “

Her interest was aroused. There was a picture on the frontispiece of Long John Silver with his parrot on his shoulder.

She said: “In that other book … that was his name … you know, the murderer.”

“We don’t know that he was,” I said, and stopped myself abruptly, for she was looking at me in surprise. I should have to go carefully.

“We shall then do history, geography and arithmetic.”

She was scowling.

“We’ll see how they fit in,” I said firmly.

The morning passed tolerably well. I discovered that she could read fairly fluently and I was pleased to discover that she had a definite taste for literature. The personalities of history interested her but she shut her mind to dates. There was a revolving globe in the cupboard and we had an interesting time discovering places on it. I showed her where I had been shipwrecked. The story intrigued her, and we finished off the morning by reading a chapter of Treasure Island;

she was absorbed by the book from the first page.

I was amazed at my success.

I had decided that we should work until midday. Then she could follow her own pursuits if she wished until three o’clock when we might walk in the gardens or in the surrounding country and learn something about plant life, or take a walk. We could resume lessons at four and work until five. That was our scholastic day.

In the afternoon she showed no wish to be on her own and offered to show me the surrounding country. I was rather pleased that she sought my company and seemed to retain her interest in me.

She talked about Treasure Island and told me what she thought would happen. She wanted to hear about my shipwreck. I began to think that it was this which had made her ready to accept me . perhaps briefly as had not been the case with the other governesses.

She took me to the top of the cliffs and we sat there for a while, watching the sea.

“We have rough seas here,” she said.

“There used to be wreckers along these coasts. They had lights and they lured the ships on to the rocks, pretending that it was the harbour. Then they stole the cargo.

I’d like to have been a wrecker. “

“Why do you want to be evil?”

“Being good is dull.”

“It’s better in the long run.”

“I like short runs.”

I laughed at her and she laughed with me.

She said suddenly: “Look at those rocks down there. A man was drowned down there not very long ago.”

“Did you know him?”

She was silent for a moment. Then she said: “He was a stranger here.

He came from London. He’s buried in St. Morwenna’s churchyard. I’ll show you his grave. Would you like to see it? “

“Well, I suppose it is hardly one of the local beauty spots.”

She laughed again.

“He was drunk,” she said.

“He fell over the cliffs and right down on to the rocks.”

“He must have been very drunk.”

“Oh, he was. There was a fuss about it. They didn’t know who he was for a long time.”

“How you love the morbid!”

“What’s that?”

“Unpleasant … gruesome.”

“I like gruesome things.”

“It’s not the wisest of preoccupations.”

She looked at me and laughed again.

“You are funny,” she said.

Looking back over that day when I retired to my room that night, I could say it had been unexpectedly satisfactory. I had some hope however flimsy of coming to an understanding with Kate.

A few days passed. To my secret delight, I was discovering that my somewhat unorthodox methods of teaching were more successful with a pupil like Kate than more conventional ones might have been. We were reading together a great deal. In fact, I held those reading sessions as a sort of bribe for good conduct during the less attractive projects. She could have read by herself but she preferred that we do it together.